Not surprisingly perhaps, the pace of technological change is forcing governments to move quickly – or to try to move quickly – to keep up, as indicated by recent news from India.
The Indian government has formed five working groups to study and formulate guidelines for anonymisation of data, zero trust architecture, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, mobile device security, and digital education.
These working groups, set up under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), will look to develop and adopt guidelines and frameworks for what is described as “effective and efficient implementation of e-governance projects” of ministries and government departments.
It seems, not too surprisingly perhaps, that current guidelines for areas like mobile device security or online learning and examinations systems will need to be revised in light of the effect of fast-evolving technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning.
A ministry official talking to the Economic Times news service was quoted as explaining: “For example, AI systems today need to plan not only about core, common and reference building blocks, but also how these blocks will be interoperable with other technologies such as IoT.”
In fact these efforts may already be underway. Press outlets suggest that the reports of the working groups on anonymisation of data and mobile security guidelines are being reviewed, while work on guidelines for zero-trust architecture, online exams, and IoT devices is ongoing.
These standards and frameworks will be a part of the updated India Digital Ecoystem Architecture. An earlier version of the planned architecture – called InDEA 2.0 – was released for public consultation in 2022.
